Mary Elizabeth Willliams, who wrote the now infamous Salon article “So what if abortion ends a life?“, is now commenting on the recent Texas abortion case. A teen girl had to go to court to prevent her parents from forcing her to have an abortion.

In an article entitled “Reproductive freedom also means choosing not to have an abortion,” she states

In a more enlightened world, this could have been just a story about a girl exercising her basic rights. It wouldn’t have become a cause that an antiabortion group would seize upon, giving it the opportunity to crow, as Center for the Defense of Life’s Greg Terra did to the L.A. Times, “This is a tremendous victory and another life has been saved. We are very proud of our teenage client for being strong enough to stand against her parents to save her unborn child’s life.” It wouldn’t be a victory for an organization dedicated to “aggressively defending the sanctity of human life.” It wouldn’t be about the fetus at all.

Benfer says, “There is no difference between this case and any of the cases in which girls have fought to receive an abortion without parental consent.”

She then goes on to quote a NARAL spokesperson:

The antiabortion side would like you to believe that we’re all ruthless baby-killers here on the side of our constitutionally protected rights. But this week, NARAL Pro Choice Texas’ Heather Busby called the decision “a victory for women’s reproductive health,” adding, “Women should have the ability to determine what happens to their bodies and what happens with a pregnancy.” And if we believe in reproductive freedom, if we truly support a woman’s right to choose, then that means supporting all her choices. Not for the sake of the baby. For the sake of the mother.

I’m certainly glad that NARAL supports women who choose to give birth to their children. I’d be more thrilled if this wasn’t the same organization that fights measures which could help women make more informed decisions about their bodies and the children they carry. Like, say, informed consent laws.

These “anti-choice” laws often require, according to NARAL, that women be informed that the father of the child is liable for child support, that women be provided with a list of abortion-alternative and adoption agencies and that they be offered the opportunity to view photographs of the child in the womb at various stages of development.

So supporting women if they choose to abort or give birth to their children is pro-choice. Providing women with information about their choices is anti-choice. Oh, the incoherence.

(Did you catch the “not for the sake of the baby”? I’m surprised she used that language.  Yes, it is a human being in the womb.)

It’s not one, and I’m going to be talking about this in Toronto tomorrow, thanks to an invitation from Toronto Right to Life, at a conference for high school students. I’ll also be discussing the hypocrisy of sex selection abortion. When I’m on the road, blogging will be light from me. But the lovely Faye Sonier will be posting, so check back for her posts.

Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Bon anniversaire? Hard to wish that for this book in particular.

Jill Stanek offers some thoughts on the January 26 Walk for Life video clip:

When Russell called the mother out as having committed “human sacrifice” (to the god of wealth), she rationalized her boast by saying she was at the time 18 and in an abusive relationship. She added, “I got a college degree from Berkeley and a master’s degree.”

This is unvarnished liberal feminism, which has turned the original meaning of feminism on its head.

Liberal feminism teaches that a woman is incapable of parenting and bettering herself at the same time, or waiting to better herself if circumstances aren’t right. Patience, sacrifice, and self-denial are not virtues. Motherhood is not a prize but a punishment.

Watch the video here.

Dr Lyn, as we all knew her, together with her husband, Dr John Billings, founded the Method of natural fertility regulation which bears their name.  Her studies on breastfeeding mothers and women approaching menopause made a major contribution to the work.  For half a century they traveled the world teaching and promoting their Method […]

She was the author of the best selling non-fiction book The Billings Method, first published in 1980. This book was reprinted 16 times with 7 new or revised editions. The latest completely revised edition was published in 2011.  Access to this book, published in 22 languages, made the Billings Method a household name and gave hope to millions of couples throughout the world.

Living together, as opposed to marriage, puts women at increased risk of abuse. As such, Carolyn Moynihan asks whether it would be reasonable to warn women and men of the consequences. She asks this in the context of Reeva Steenkamp’s death, at the hands of her boyfriend Oscar Pistorius.

Why do we accept this trend? Why do we not warn young women and men of the downside — and the downright dangers — of giving themselves bodily and emotionally to someone they barely know? Why do we not give them the dismal statistics before they start experimenting, and the values and character training that will set them on the path of real friendships and marital commitment? Social silence on this matter means social guilt.

What do you make of this? I think it’s an interesting point. I don’t think living together killed Reeva Steenkamp. I do wonder, more generally, why we are happy to teach young people to engage in risky behaviour with regards to sexual ethics. It’s a long road to freedom for every single one of us on those thorny questions, and it might help, as a starting point, if we didn’t teach that sex is consequence free.

We don’t know our abortion rate. So any commentary declaring sex education to be working because of fewer abortions is just guesswork. That’s just one example for the implications of the lack of data. Thanks Pat Maloney for drawing attention to this.

I think pro-lifers and pro-choicers have to consider the difficult cases and in this story, we have one.

I make the point on occassion that abortion given or abortion denied, most often, does not address the actual circumstances facing the mother. This is another such case. Abortion is wholly legal in the UK (yes, they have a restriction, but it is very high at 24 weeks, I believe, and furthermore, women can get around that in certain circumstances.) She had access to abortion. She had one scheduled. But she hung herself, three days before. A total and utter tragedy.

The scheduled abortion clearly did not alleviate her feelings of despair. And neither would have an abortion fulfilled.

You can go and get an abortion, but you’ll still meet your very same problems on the way home from the clinic. In this case, this poor woman met her problems just before going to the clinic.

I wish someone had been able to reach her in time.

I wrote a response to Sun Media’s Mark Bonokoski’s piece on the three MPs who called for a RCMP investigation into the 491 born alive infant deaths. Here’s a snippet of what I wrote:

Lastly, he argued that since he doesn’t have a uterus, he cannot form an opinion on abortion and that this position isn’t a cop-out, but a fact. He’s wrong. It’s a total cop-out.

I’m not a woman who has suffered abuse, but I have an opinion on domestic abuse. I’m not a man, but I have an opinion on funding for prostate cancer research. I’m not a slave, but I have an opinion on human trafficking.  I’m not a soldier or live in a war zone, but I have an opinion on Canadian military engagement. I’m not an Aboriginal person, but I have an opinion on the Idle No More movement.

Perhaps he believes that he must have first-hand knowledge of every human experience before he can form an opinion, but this seems like an odd, if not impossible, position for a national media editor to take.  And I can assure him that the rest of the society doesn’t function that way.  We form opinions and vote accordingly, even though we haven’t walked a mile in every Canadian’s shoes.

I go to the movies often enough because good friends ask and it seems sociable to say yes. I generally have a running commentary going on in the back of my head that goes a little bit like this fake trailer. And I truly couldn’t stand The Notebook. Enjoy.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gv-AMiofEI]